Iowa City Sober Living opens home that provides sober space for women in recovery

What's believed to be Iowa's first outlet for recovery in a sober living environment is now open.

Iowa City Sober Living founders Merrilee Ramsey and Sue Gardner opened the doors to their brand new sober living home at the beginning of October. They welcomed more than 100 individual donors, supportive community members and recovering alcoholics to an open house to showcase the resource and space that their kindness helped produced.

Ramsey and Gardner, who each battled alcoholism over the past few years, set out to create what they say is the first-of-its-kind space in Iowa for women to support one another, heal and recover as they continue their journey toward sobriety.

The brand-new home on Iowa City’s southwest side is owned by Sober Living, which received hundreds of individual donors and contributions from local organizations like the Community Fund of Johnson County and the city of North Liberty.

It has enough space for eight women to live.

Sober living also provides support for recovering alcoholics, something Ramsey said helps cut down on relapse. Studies from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services back this claim.

Four key pillars guide women in sober living

The Iowa City Sober Living house operates under four key pillars, the co-founders told the Press-Citizen: Accountability, continuing with a recovery plan, self-care and support from peers.

The women in the home are held accountable to sobriety, with 14 or more consecutive days of sobriety and testing required upon first entering the home. The home also is equipped with a breathalyzer if anyone is suspected to have snuck away for a drink.

Every recovery is different, Gardner said, but whatever a woman’s particular relapse prevention plan is, the sober living house is committed to helping execute it. That could mean anything from individual counseling or 12-step meetings throughout the week.

Gardner and Ramsey want to create a perfect space for self-care and provide as many resources to the women of the house to encourage recovery. Sometimes, that might mean meditation sessions, yoga classes or just simple exercise like running on a treadmill in the home’s exercise room, Gardner said. Self-care also can manifest through other methods, she said, including gardening in the backyard or cooking and eating healthier. Local professors have volunteered to come work with residents on emotional expression through literature and a nearby yoga instructor has committed to visiting the home and conducting yoga classes.

Peer support is a “built-in support system,” Gardner said, inherent within the sober living environment featuring other women in recovery and a house leader who helps support recovery while continuing on her own journey toward sobriety.

The four pillars help the women living in the home build themselves back up, Gardner said, while providing skills, assets and discipline they will need once they leave the home. The recommended stay at the sober living house is roughly six months and many come directly from treatment facilities, she said.

“(That) is kind of the perfect way to go,” Ramsey said. “Not going back home, not calling your best friend and going out for the evening and (saying), ‘Oh, I’ll go to sober living next week,’ because it won’t happen.”

There is no set period of time that women must stay at the sober living home, so they can decide at any point to leave and not come back.

The journey began for co-founders as alcoholics seeking sober scenery

When Gardner first sought help for her alcoholism a few years ago, she recovered through rehab but realized so much had gone on in her life and returning home would not immediately be possible.

“When I got out of rehab, I could not go back to my home because I had gone through a divorce,” Gardner said. “There was just too much emotional pain, and I knew after having a few months in recovery that exposing yourself to that kind of emotional stress is not a good idea.”

She sought sober living options in eastern Iowa, looking to keep close to her job as a nurse, but there were no resources available.

“Fortunately, I had colleagues who improvised a sober living environment for me,” Gardner said.

That is when she crossed paths with Ramsey, a recovering alcoholic herself and Gardner’s first sponsor out of rehab.

Ramsey, who also is a nurse, worked in Cedar Rapids. Whenever she would be behind schedule leaving work, her husband would pace back and forth in the garage, waiting for her to get home and wondering whether she had been involved in an accident on the way home or had stopped for a drink without telling him.

“I was fortunate enough to have a family that was willing to stick by me, although I caused a lot of harm and wreckage over the last few years before that,” Ramsey said. “It was constant worry. Am I going to drink again? Am I going to drink and drive again?”

Ramsey needed a change of scenery, too. She went into rehab at The Abbey Addiction Treatment Center in Bettendorf. But resources to aid sobriety after rehab are sorely lacking, and that burden then falls on families, causing chaos and creating unmendable voids between addicts and their families.

"Sober living will provide that comfort and reassurance that their family members are being taken care of," Ramsey said.

Opening the Sober Living house is the first step in a two-part journey

Both have since put alcohol in the rearview mirror, but they know that they each placed heavy burdens on their families and wanted to put an end to that by providing the safe sober living space they have since opened. That journey first began with a trip to Minnesota and a visit to St. Paul Sober Living.

Once they realized this is something they were passionate about, the pair took classes in venture school, learning how to start a business. When they decided to become a nonprofit, they went to classes to learn how to get 501c3 status.

It took a few years, but the organization found a home in Iowa City that is right for them and discovered a space where they could provide a resource that had not previously existed in Iowa.

Efforts can go even further than the impact Ramsey and Gardner have made, they said. Ramsey is hoping to get the state of Iowa certified by the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, NARR, to make it easier for other sober living homes to open and be certified.

Applications have rolled in over the first few weeks. Ramsey said they expect that the home will be completely occupied by the end of the year. That only emphasizes the need for additional sober living resources in the state, Ramsey said.

“Now, we begin what I would consider the second leg of our journey, which is to really implement what our vision for sober living was,” Gardner said. “And that’s going to take some trial and error, but that’s really what I’ve been looking forward to.”

Ryan Hansen covers local government and crime for the Press-Citizen. He can be reached at rhansen@press-citizen.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @ryanhansen01.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Iowa City Sober Living house opens doors to women in alcohol recovery